Hold Up the World
by DeskRage
Summary: A series of short vignettes about love, life, and those little moments that you'd think would fall between the cracks of time but don't-because despite the whole saving the world three and a half times thank you very much , you're all still human. Well. Mostly.
1. Wonder

A/N: The challenge was a theme set, and that each theme must be between 100-500 words long. Here's another attempt to address my weakness-brevity! After the great honking beast that is_ For Granted_, I figured it was appropriate. This series of ficlets is simply an exploration into the lives, quirks and growing pains of the lovely cast of Slayers over the first three seasons, _Slayers, Slayers: Next and Slayers Try_. This will be unlike most of my other work in that I will post these as I write them, and they are not necessarily in chronological order. Hope you enjoy!

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Hold Up The World

(c) DeskRage, June 2012

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#04 Wonder

He would never forget, during the entire ridiculous episode that constituted their first meeting, and then their first real life-and death encounter, she'd never once shown the slightest bit of revulsion or pity, even when she'd playfully slapped him and bruised her hand, or caught him trying to clean sand from between the stony scales on his face with a sharp twig.

"Here," she'd said, handing him a soft bristled brush, "This might help."

He'd never borrowed anything from a woman before.

"What?"

"Friends share, Zel," she'd grinned at him, and proffered the brush again, leaving him to wonder, a little dazedly at what point that_ had_ become friends, and if he could even pin it down to a specific event.


	2. Nowhere

#41 Nowhere

"I have no idea!" Lina cried, gripping the map like she was trying to make it bleed, "This looks nothing like anything!" she gestured out at the endless yellow stretch of parched yellow sand and rocks—broken up by the odd brave scrub that looked dangerously close to exploding into flame.

There was no scrap of civilization to be seen. Well, except for the bleaching bones of that dead guy over there—he had what looked like a crackly travel brochure in his hand. Maybe that counted…?

"Gourry! Where would you say we are?" Lina snapped at him. Her face was pink and shiny with sweat, and she was breathing hard. He smiled a little, shrugged.

"All I know is that I'm with you," he said honestly.


	3. Quiet

#21 Quiet

When the dogs stopped barking, when the wind was still, when laughter fell into nothing, silence fell thick and syrupy and everything it touched came up sticky. Amelia had always remembered it with the stifling un-noise that had suffocated the palace when her mother's coffin rasped shut, with the vacuum of her sister's retreat into the night. Cold, crawly feelings swept across her skin and burrowed into her guts when there was nothing, bringing with them the shadows in her heart that whispered of wrongness and sorrow.

So she talked. She would fill up that gaping emptiness the way she'd brighten up a dusty room with a vase of fresh flowers. It didn't have to be anything profound, as long as it was bright and chased those shadows back to their stuffy corners where they belonged.

Not everyone shared this philosophy.

For the first few weeks, Amelia had fidgeted and stewed. Sure, Miss Lina was rarely without an opinion, but on long travelling days, after she and Mister Gourry had finished some energetic, ultimately lighthearted squabble, they'd just stop talking, and fall into a strange silence. Mister Zelgadis of course was also reticent to break it, and soldiered on tight-lipped and contemplative as the stone.

_Is something wrong?_ Amelia would worry as they walked. _Is everything okay?_

Of course it was. Most of the time. Because as she travelled with them, she began to understand, silence had its own brightness—in Miss Lina's little smile when she remembered something, or in Mister Gourry's wordless offer to mend a rip in someone's sock, or in Mister Zelgadis' stillness when Amelia would lean against him all warm and toasty around a campfire.


	4. Quitting

#25 Quitting

Before, Zelgadis could say he gave his all, believe it, and then lie down and die. It was easier, practical, even. It made sense. But after meeting_ them_, submitting to death-even when most of his life is soaking his through his clothes and sinking into the thirsty earth, even when he can't feel his right arm and he's pretty sure ribs are poking through at least one lung-is an act of shameful lame-assery. So he shifts the slippery hilt of his sword to his left hand and spits the blood out of his mouth and _breathes—_all he can think or is how disappointed they'd be in him if he gave in now.


	5. Waste

07 Waste

They'd been camping about ten miles from the nearest town, with Lina struggling to make up excuses for why she didn't want to walk anymore and trying to not double over in agony when her uterus decided it wasn't getting enough attention. She'd been in a rotten mood not just due to that agony, but the fact she'd run out of linens to deal with the humiliation said uterus was going to inflict on her clothing within the next few hours. She had no idea how Gourry noticed or found out, but when she opened her eyes in the morning, she found herself staring up at him, puffing and panting and holding a girly-looking bag in his right hand—with even girlier contents.

"You mean you ran twenty miles there and back when we're just going to get there today anyway?" Zelgadis had asked. "That seems like kind of a waste."

"_It wasn't."_ But even as Lina accepted the bag from Gourry, clamping down on mortification and fury at her own body for putting her through this, she couldn't help but grin a little because Zelgadis wasn't one to talk about wasting anything.

Like that one time on the southern coast of Lyzeille, when Zelgadis had wordlessly tried to help Amelia peel her crab—she'd sprained her wrist trying to punch out a troll—even though Lina knew he didn't have much feeling in his fingers and he ended up getting bits of shell and shreds of meat everywhere and how Amelia had helped him pick the shards out of his wiry hair with her good hand afterward.


	6. Defeat

#50 Defeat

The silvery rasp of swords unsheathed, first one, then two tuned the air like a harp string. A small, grim smile tugged at the corner of Gourry's mouth. He stood like a dragon, power coiled in his chest and shoulders. Zelgadis' stance was wolfish, chin slightly imperceptibly inclined over his throat. It screamed "defense", but Lina knew better—and so did Gourry.

Zelgadis moved first. Three measured steps, the wind up before a swing. Sunlight flared off bright metal.

The tension snapped. Zelgadis lunged. Gourry met him like a tidal wave. Swords clashed. They struggled against each other for a few breathless seconds before breaking apart. Both launched to attack, leaping, sliding, attack and parry. Occasionally, Lina would cringe when the swords clanged—she knew from her own experience Zel's strikes rattled your bones and turned your muscles to soup, and Gourry, well…she rarely bothered with Gourry. With Zel she could at least try and win.

Zel fought with a weird archaic style that she'd never encountered in anyone else with little modifications he'd clearly tacked on himself. Despite his weight, he'd float and dodge like a fox, all grace and measured angles, before spinning out into a wild, savage strike meant to surprise and intimidate before flowing straight back into the light, heeled movement.

"They're—they're not going to hurt each other?" Fillia pressed a loose fist against her mouth.

Lina appraised the situation with a practiced eye. "Probably not."

"Probably!"

Gourry moved like the sea in a storm, perfectly able to adapt, flow and bend with even the strongest the wind and thunder could offer. As such, his technique was impossible to read. The best Zelgadis could do was react, while Gourry practically read Zelgadis' mind, matching him blow for blow and then some by attacking Zel on the right side. Zelgadis was right handed, but he usually attatcked from the left. Gourry's strikes were sweeping, liquid power. He hefted his sword high above his head for a decisive blow.

An opening! Zelgadis charged.

Well, it would have been an opening for anyone else. Gourry flowed into the energy of Zelgadis' attack, aborting his initial blow, disarming Zelgadis with a flick of the wrist, and knocking him to the ground with the flat of his sword in the same movement. Zelgadis went down hard. He rolled to his knees, hands in ready cast position, but the fight was over—Gourry's sword pressed into the base of his throat.

A little wry smile twitched Zelgadis' mouth. "I lost."

Gourry sheathed his sword with a grin and helped Zelgadis to his feet.

"Now wait, just a minute," Fillia objected. "Shouldn't it have been a draw? Mr. Zelgadis could have cast a spell, even at the end…" She seemed anxious. "So no one lost, right?"

"We were just sparring, Filia," Zelgadis explained. "No Sword of Light, no magic. It's important that we keep up our forms so we don't get sloppy. Besides," he shrugged, "there's no shame in losing to Gourry."


End file.
